The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home By Dan Ariely

Ariely (Predictably Irrational) expands his research on behavioral economics to offer a more positive and personal take on human irrationality's implications for life, business, and public policy. After a youthful accident left him badly scarred and facing grueling physical therapy, Ariely's treatment required him to accept temporary pain for long-term benefit—a trade-off so antithetical to normal human behavior that it sparked the author's fascination with why we consistently fail to act in our own best interest. The author, professor of behavioral economics at Duke, leads us through experiments that reveals such idiosyncrasies as the IKEA effect (if you build something, pride and sentimental attachment are likely to give you an inflated sense of its quality) and the Baby Jessica effect (why we respond to one person's suffering but not to the suffering of many). (amazon).

A book in which he challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are--how we repeat them again and again. I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them" (wikipedia).

Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five By John Medina

In his New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina showed us how our brains really work—and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools. Now, in Brain Rules for Baby, he shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to 5. This book is destined to revolutionize parenting. Brain Rules for Baby bridges the gap between what scientists know and what parents practice. Through fascinating and funny stories, Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and dad, unravels how a child’s brain develops--and what you can do to optimize it (amazon).

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Dont By Jim Collins

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. (amazon). A book on leadership and organizational culture that will change your ideas on forming and nurturing organizations.

A Peoples History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn By by Howard Zinn

A People's History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency. (amazon). This book presents history from an almost unheard perspective.

Witty and fast-paced, this book spells out how to position a leader so that it gets into the mind and stays there, position a follower in a way that finds a 'hole' not occupied by the leader, and avoid the pitfalls of letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning reveals the fascinating case histories and anecdotes behind the campaigns of many stunning successes and failures in the world of advertising (amazon).

A humorous yet deep and insightful book on creativity and creative endeavors. From Sex and Cash theory to the funny cartoons in the book, the book is not just funny, but hugely inspirational for anyone who wants to start his own creative endeavors. Coming from an author who specializes in the strange art form of drawing cartoons behind business cards, this book has a few old ideas and a few new ones but what is truly new about this book is the refreshing perspective in which these ideas are explained and shared.

In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule—what scientists know for sure about how our brains work—and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. (www.brainrules.net)

Pinker claims that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn't require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn't require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn't require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries; and that belief in a blank slate human nature encourages destructive social trends such as persecution of the successful and totalitarian social engineering. (Wikipedia)

Here is a quote from this book- read the book about the "Big Short" if you like this quote- even if you don't particularly care about sub prime mortgages, CDO's and the financial crisis .
"When a Wall Street firm helped him to get into a trade that seemed perfect in every way, he asked the salesman, "I appreciate this, but I just want to know one thing: How are you going to fuck me?" Heh-heh-heh, c'mon, we'd never do that, the trader started to say, but Danny, though perfectly polite, was insistent. We both know that unadulterated good things like this trade don't just happen between little hedge funds and big Wall Street firms. I'll do it, but only after you explain to me how you are going to fuck me. And the salesman explained how he was going to fuck him. And Danny did the trade."

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a philosophy / literary book by the epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The core theme of the book is that the impact of rare events is huge and highly underrated. We are not aware of it, which increases their effect much. Our mind and thinking habits are poorly equipped to handle rare events. The book relates the various cognitive and psychological reasons of this, from multiple perspectives. The book is written in a literary style and covers a wide variety of subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and living life. (wikipedia)

A compilation of Malcolm’s articles published in The New Yorker, the book is a collection of articles basically covering “the Problem of Other Minds” where Gladwell tries to show his readers the world through the eyes of others. The book gets its title from the story of Cesar Millan taming the wildest of dogs with his touch. While most are busy wondering how Milan tames the dogs, Gladwell is more interested in finding out What the Dog sees and why the dog decides to mellow down.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious; mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls such as stereotypes. (wikipedia)

An acclaimed master piece, a way of life, an influence on the life of millions of readers, Atlas Shrugged is an astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world, and did. Atlas Shrugged raises more questions and challenges conventional wisdom way more than most books that you might have read. The book opens with, "Who is John Galt?” a question whose answer might change your thought process and bring out a different person in you altogether.